


Light in the darkness

by Iseegoodinyou



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, F/M, Late at Night, Love, Memories, Near Future, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 02:18:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8232629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iseegoodinyou/pseuds/Iseegoodinyou
Summary: The events of season 5 are starting to take their toll on our Captain and he looses a bit his grip on reality, but Emma is always there to remind him who he really is and what he's worth.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime after episode 5x23, with loads of references to what happened in the season (so don't read this if you haven't seen it yet!), but no references to season 6 (as I haven't seen it yet!). This is my first fiction ever on Captain Swan and also my first fiction ever in English, so be gentle! :) All suggestions and comments will be very much appreciated!

Emma woke up with the sounds of blankets being ruffled up. She felt Killian’s body twitch close to her. A spark of irritation crossed her mind. What the hell was he doing in the middle of the night?

She groaned and turned around to face him, pushing her tangled hair away from her sleepy eyes, ready to tell him off for interrupting a damn good dream.

A soft murmur reached her ears. It took Emma a moment to realise it was her name: “Emma…”

“Go back to sleep, Killian…” she whispered back with drowsy words “It’s the middle of the night…”

Killian’s body twitched again and he replied something through quick short breaths, but his voice was so low she couldn’t make up the words.

She opened her eyes, blinking in the dim light, stretching an arm to touch his shoulder. His muscles were tight under her fingertips.

Emma’s instincts kicked in and she knew something was wrong even before she heard his voice again, broken with sobs: “No… no… please…”

She felt her heart sink into her stomach and fear creeping under her skin. She sat up, shaking Killian’s shoulder. “Killian… what’s going on?” she asked, voice high pitched with concern.

He didn’t reply.

She spun around to turn on the lamp on the bedside table. Soft yellowish light filled the bedroom and Emma blinked quickly to adjust her eyes, before turning back to Killian. He was lying on his back, blankets all tangled around his body. She immediately registered the stiffness of his neck and shoulders, his sweaty and pale skin, his fingers gripping the blankets so tightly the knuckles were white. She looked up at his face, taking in his tangled wet hair, his gritted teeth, his clenched jaw. His eyes were shut in a pained expression. She shook him again, calling him, trying to control her surging panic.

He jerked up, suddenly, opening his eyes, screaming her name at the top of his lungs: “Emma! EMMA!”

She pulled at his shoulder, making him turn towards her, not without effort: he was stiff and cold, like a block of marble. His eyes were unfocused, his expression wild and hurt.

“Killian, I’m here…” she said, touching his cheek.

He frowned, squinting his blue eyes full of tears trying to make up her face. “Emma…?!” he whispered, his voice trembling with uncertainty. And then, as suddenly as he woke up moments before, he pulled her into his arms.

She felt his fingers dig into the fabric of her T-shirt, his chest press into hers, his face sink into the space between her shoulder and her neck. He was hugging her so tight her ribs hurt. His whole body was shaking badly, dry sobs escaping his lips.

Her body still frozen in shock, Emma finally found her voice: “Killian, you’re freaking me out! What’s happening? Are you hurt?” She held her breath, waiting for his answer.

He didn’t let go of her, he only moved his head side to side slightly to let her know that he was not hurt.

Emma exhaled with relief, closing her eyes and relaxing her own body against his shaking one. He was having a nightmare. It was just a nightmare, not some evil curse or some bad guy came to steal his soul or a magical wound re-opening in his neck, threatening to kill him… again. Just a bad dream. But one hell of a bad dream, from the looks of it.

She returned the hug, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Killian’s sweaty hair tickled her cheek. He was slowly trying to calm himself down, breathing in and out deeply. Emma stroked his back gently, back and forth with one hand, the other one sliding through his dark damp hair. She whispered soothing words in his ear: “It’s ok, it was just a nightmare…”

Killian exhaled a long shaking breath and he finally spoke again: “It felt so real…” His voice was so broken it didn’t even sound like his. It brought up terrible memories in her head, almost all of them picturing Killian close to death… or worse.

She tried to move away from him, to look at his face. He resisted at first, reluctant to leave her arms, but he let go when she begged: “Look at me, Killian…”

He let her push him away a little, but he kept his hand on her arm, holding on to her, like he was a ship in the middle of an angry ocean and that contact was the only anchor he had not to get lost among the waves. He didn’t look into her eyes, but he was far enough for Emma to see his face. His expression was even more dreadful than his broken voice. It was clear that whatever he was seeing in his mind, it was causing him pain, something somehow worse than a bleeding wound, something deeper.

She felt the urge to do something to ease that pain, because seeing him suffer was something she could not bear anymore. But to do it, she needed to know what was going on in his head.

She lifted her hand and she touched his face lightly, just a brush of her fingertips on his skin. He leaned into the touch, seeking more contact, kissing her palm with dry lips. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

He didn’t speak for a long moment, so long that Emma was almost tempted to say something else, but then he lifted his face to finally look at her. Emma’s heart skipped a beat when his eyes found hers. They were a darker blue than usual, like the deepest of the oceans in a thunderstorm, and glossy with tears.

He exhaled another shaking breath and he started speaking: “I… I was the Dark One…”

Emma’s heart shrunk with guilt at the word.

“But it was different… I, the non-dark me, was there too, but it was like I was trapped in my own body. I could see what he was doing, but he couldn’t hear me and I could not move… I couldn’t make him stop!”

Killian closed his eyes and a single tear escapes his eyelashes, rolling down his cheek.

“The things I said to you… the things I _did_ to you…”

His voice broke on the last phrase and he struggled to keep control himself.

Emma caught the tear with her thumb, smearing it on his skin.

“It was just a dream…” she whispered.

But he opened his stormy eyes again, piercing hers with his intense stare.

“I killed you, Swan…” he confessed through gritted teeth, struggling to get each word out, as if they were too painful for him to say out loud “I sank… my bloody hook… into your heart. I watched you die. And I laughed when the light left your eyes. And all the time I was screaming your name, forcing myself to stop, but I couldn’t stop him, I couldn’t save you…”

Emma’s eyes filled with tears as well, watching Killian lower his head again, his jaw clenching and unclenching quickly, as he usually did when he was angry. His grip tightened painfully onto her forearm.

She felt the weight of the guilt in her heart. It was her fault if Killian was having nightmares, it was because of her that he became a Dark One. And it didn’t matter that she did it to save his life, she should have known that all that darkness would have affected him more than it did her, because of his troubled past.

Emma pushed away these thoughts. She knew she couldn’t change the past. She needed to find the right words to help Killian now. She closed her eyes, touching her forehead to his.

“It was not real…” she started, but Killian pulled away, interrupting her with anger in his voice: “But it was, wasn’t it? I might not have killed you when I was the Dark One, but I thought of it!” The anger was quickly replaced by broken words spoken through gritted teeth again “I wanted… to hurt you… I said those awful things to you… I remember…”

Emma remembered them too. Each and every one of them. When he told her she failed to believe in him, even if he’d always believed in her. When he told her the only feelings he’d left for her were anger, hatred and disappointment. When he called her a pretty, blond distraction for his plan of revenge. All these words were wounds, still bleeding and burning in her heart. She’d never thought before that they could hurt him as much as they hurt her.

She reached out for him once again, cupping his face into both her hands. He let her. She saw him flinch slightly at the sight of her tears.

“It was not you, Killian. It was the darkness. Darkness that I put into you…”

“…to save my life…”

“It doesn’t matter now. What matters is that it was not you who said and did those things. It was the Dark One. And he is not in your head anymore…”

Emma’s hands slid down Killian’s neck and chest, her fingers interlocking with his.

He took in a long, deep breath and his shoulders finally relaxed when the meaning of her words sank in.

Emma felt her own sigh of relief escape her lips.

Killian shook his head, hair covering his eyes, murmuring: “I’m sorry, Swan…”

Emma squeezed his hand. “You have nothing to be sorry about. I told you, it was not you…”

Killian shook his head again, harder. “No, not for that... for… this…” He lifted his stump, pointing to himself.

Emma frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I’m supposed to be strong, to protect you… and look at me! Shattered by a bloody nightmare… hell, I’m shedding tears like a pathetic little girl!”

He dried his red-rimmed eyes angrily on his scarred wrist, hiding his face from her self-consciously.

“Killian, you don’t need to protect me!”

He lifted an eyebrow at her in his usual expression and he almost looked like his normal self for a second, despite everything. Emma could almost hear his sarcastic remark, even if he remained completely silent. She blushed.

“Ok, fair enough, you need to. But you don’t have to do it all the time! That’s the whole point of us! I can lean on you, but you can lean on me, too, when you need to. I can be strong too, you know… I am not a fragile, delicate flower you need to keep under a glass bell…”

Killian cracked a small smile at that image and Emma’s heart felt a little lighter.

“I bloody well know that, love. I just hate being… weak…”

Emma suddenly wanted to punch him in the face, despite his still quite shaken expression. She just couldn’t believe that, after all he had been through, after all the times they had spoken about it, he still used that word to define himself. _Weak_.

For him it meant many things: not as noble as his brother; not powerful enough to defeat Rumpelstiltskin and save his first love, Milah; not strong enough to fight the darkness; not good enough to deserve saving from death.

But Emma knew he was so much more than that. He was the hero who saved her father’s life, back in Neverland. The same hero who kept her on her path when she was the Dark One with his loving eyes and gallant gestures. The same hero who sacrificed himself to save _everyone_.

It was so unfair that she could see all these things so easily, while he could not.

She wished she had a magic mirror or something to show him how he looked like through her eyes. She wished he could just forgive himself for all the things he’d done in the past, once and for all. She wished he could just believe in himself, the same way she believed in him.

When she spoke again, her voice came out sharper than she had meant: “Weak? It’s that what you think you are, just because you woke up in tears from a nightmare? I seem to remember we’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we? Maybe I just need to refresh your memory too… let’s see: you were the Dark One, yes. But it was not your choice, it was mine. And you did all those things you regret so much, yes. But in the end you sacrificed yourself to save us all, like the most noble of heroes. You were trapped in the Underworld, where Hades did horrible things to you… things so horrible you don’t even want to talk about, to keep me from being upset…”

Killian flinched visibly as he heard the last part. He thought he was doing a good job pretending he didn’t want to talk about those days in the Underworld because they were too painful for him to remember, but Emma knew the real reason was that he didn’t want her to know how hurt he really was, because knowing that would hurt her too.

“Oh, yes, I know that’s the real reason you always avoid the subject… but that’s not the point now. The point is that you endured everything, you defeated the God of the Underworld and you came back where you belong. With me. You need to give yourself some credit, Hook! The strongest man in any world would shatter in pieces if he had to go through half of what you’ve been through… if this is not being strong, then I have no idea what it is. I don’t want to hear you call yourself weak ever again, do you understand?”

Emma took a long breath after her monologue, shaking away her irritation and thinking that maybe this time she managed to convince him. But then she saw Killian’s lips turn upwards into a mocking smile and a low quiet chuckle reached her ears. Her anger came all back instantly. Why the hell was he laughing now? Did he think she was just mocking him?

“What?!” she blurted out.

Killian squeezed her fingers a little. “Have you noticed that when you get angry I magically revert from being Killian to being Hook? Or Captain? Or, worst of all, pirate?”

Emma frowned. She didn’t even realise that she had used his nickname instead of his birth name. But then again, _Killian_ was too intimate, too sweet, too _theirs_ to use when he was just talking nonsense.

“Well, it’s not my fault if you’re being an idiotic –”

Killian would never know which appellative she would pick this time because he just leaned forward a few inches and placed his lips on hers.

Emma froze in surprise for a second, but then she closed her eyes, a soft, sweet warmth replacing the anger in her blood. She forgot what she was about to say and she leaned into him, wanting more of those lips, wrapping her free hand around his neck, keeping him close, brushing his silky dark hair.

He pulled away, slowly, too soon.

She felt his forehead touch hers, before they both opened their eyes.

“I won’t say that evil _w_ word anymore, I swear…” he promised.

Emma smiled, all traces of anger gone, erased by the soft touch of his lips. Sometimes she truly thought he had magical powers.

Killian just stared at her for a few seconds in silence, his piercing blue eyes fixed on her green ones, ocean and forest meeting halfway. She could stare at those eyes forever… but then his voice, low and soft, took her back to reality before she could drown and be lost: “Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve you in my life, Swan. I don’t know where I’d be if didn’t have you. You truly are a Saviour…”

The expression on his face was relaxed enough now that she felt safe teasing him a little. She rolled her eyes, replying: “Tell me something I don’t know…”

But he would have none of it. It was one of those rare moments when he didn’t want to be sarcastic, just open and honest, without shielding his love for her behind flirting jokes. His stare darkened and she was literally hypnotized by all that blue.

“I’m serious, Swan…” he said, his voice reaching the deepest part of her heart “You are my light in the darkness, you’ve always been, since the first moment I ever laid eyes on you…”

Emma caressed his cheek again, unable to stop herself.

“And I always will be, forever…” she whispered before leaning in to kiss him again.

 

_The end_


End file.
